Japanese TAs

So in my Japanese class there are these two TAs, I am not sure if they are considered TAs, they are students but like, they weren't forced to be there just asked if they wanted to. They are both from Japan and their names are Sae and Kasumi. These two are really helpful in my studies, as they are both from the country they can teach me things in and out of the classroom, they've helped me study for an exam and even taught me how to casually talk with people in Japanese, unlike the extremely formal speech we are currently learning as of now. They are really great people, and great friends, and they have both helped a lot to make this year better.

Fallacies

Learning about fallacies is interesting, while I have seen these in real life, I never knew that they actually had a name to them. Now when I read articles or listen to a speech by a politician or anybody that is attempting to persuade anybody I can tell what they are doing wrong and it's quite satisfying. Doing the conspiracy theories is the most fun to be honest, they are so out there and, in all honesty, insane. Thus making them the more fun!

All nighters

All nighters are fun, you get to do things that you want to do and have no restriction on how long you do it. However, they can also be stressful if you're staying up to do a homework assignment or studying for a really big exam. Throughout my time at school I have learned that pulling all nighters on a school day is horrible. You'll feel like crap during classes and you'll miss so much, and you might fall asleep. As for exams it's actually better to sleep and be on your A-game instead of being really tired and unable to focus. All of this is based on experience because last year I pulled all nighters for no reason all the time, and I hated myself for it usually. I would just like to pass on this information to you, would be reader, that if you have class the next day, maybe manage your time a bit better, and go to sleep, it's good for you.

Persuasion

Starting our third project on a research paper we decided to discuss how arguments basically work. This was actually pretty interesting because a lot of it I never actually thought about, and I sat down and thought about what was discussed and class and I realized how often all of these poor arguments are used. Whether it be by me, my peers, or even a famous politician. I wish we could do more things like this, a class like this was a bit more enjoyable for me.

KIA

So for the past week during DEARTS class we had to go to the KIA, Kalamazoo Institute of Art. I went a total of three times, twice with DEARTS and once with my friend, Sarah. She really wanted to go so I decided that we should go together, and to be honest if you're at all interested in art or looking at cool things you should go, admission is free and it doesn't take too long to really go around the entire thing. However, when you go for a class it sucks because you're forced to look at specific things instead of what you want to see.

Movie and Song analysis

So lately in class we've been talking about our analysis on our movie and song and turning it into an essay. Personally I don't like this at all, the song is really difficult to talk about for how long it needs to be, the movie is alright, but still seems more difficult than it should be, granted it doesn't have to be super easy. I just wish we could do an assignment that I would enjoy a bit more that didn't have so many restrictions.

Other Classes

This semester I thought I was going to try to take easier classes, and so far I was wrong. I took Macroeconomics, Basic Japanese 2, Thought and Writing, and Direct Encounter of the Arts (DEARTS). Thought and writing and DEARTS are not too bad, however, macroecon and japanese are way hard. On my first two exams for both of these classes I failed both of them! Even in Japanese I am struggling with the newest vocab, it's really hard to keep up. Stress is as at an all time high for me, I am trying my best to do better, hopefully it works.

Class

We are currently analyzing a movie and a piece of music, and to me, that sounds great! I have always enjoyed analyzing things because it's so based on opinion that you cannot be wrong. I love sharing my opinion and I love hearing other people's opinion. I'm really looking forward to this assignment, I think it'll be a lot of fun and easy!

Touching up

One problem I have always had with my papers is touching things up and revising them, I cannot figure out what is bad in an essay or paper because how I wrote it is how I think it's best. Through a rough draft I already fix mistakes that are written and make my story as best as it can be before revisions. So when in English class we were told to make revisions I freaked out a little, I didn't know what to do, so I did the best I can and I feel as though I could've done better.

Carrie and Opinions

As of recently we've been watching the movie Carrie in class, and been told to discuss our opinions on the movie based on characters, hidden meanings, and the such. Personally I have never enjoyed analyzing movies because I have never been a big movie watcher. Being made to watch a movie for an assignment has me dreading this assignment already and I haven't even really thought about what movie I should even do it on. Personally, I'd rather get into a discussion about more practical things like politics and sciences and inform myself on others' opinions on those topics. However, knowing the arts and how somebody feels about it can really give you a clear description on how that person may be personality wise. At least, that's how I feel, which is why sometimes it's good to analyze arts with others, you can really get to know somebody, on the contrary talking about things that are more, for a lack of better words, intelligence based, you cannot really understand the person personality wise, however on how they see the world and it's entirety. I went a little off topic, but all in all I'm currently dreading what we're doing in class and hopefully it isn't as bad as it may seem.

Maybe a switch to an earlier blog?

So after talking with my dad about schooling he advised that I should try to go back into engineering, that he thinks I still like it and shouldn't just give up. If I do for some reason decide to become an engineer again then I would actually be able to stay at WMU and not have to transfer, which makes me so happy because I love it here at WMU, it's great. While I still would want to go to EMU because my brothers are nearby, and the SAG major sounds fantastic, WMU holds a place in my heart that is near and dear. I cannot explain why it does, but it just does. I fell in love with WMU and I never want to leave, which is why I am so tempted to stay. If I were to stay I would finish out my Japanese minor, and perhaps gets a Business minor with an Engineering major. Which in all actuality sounds amazing and something I could totally see myself doing and it makes me really happy to think about. So all in all, I'm hopeful about keeping a future at WMU.

All about me

Hey, I know this is super late and I was meant to do it so long ago but hey, better late than never... right?
Haha...

Anyways, all about me!

So, I am Bradley Aaron Mundy, my initials spell out BAM, so my dad nicknamed me Bam Bam, like the character from The Flintstones. I am 19 years old, with two brothers who are 25 and 24, named Garry and Matthew respectively. I used to live in a house with these two and my two parents, now my brothers are off to their own apartments with jobs and my parents live together alone and I'm here at Kalamazoo now.

I originally grew up in Hazel Park, a small 1 mile by 1 mile town that tried to be as ghetto as Detroit but didn't quite make the cut.

I lived there for a good chunk of my life, until I was in the 5th grade, after that my parents wanted to get out of there (for good reason that place SUCKED) and now we live in a nice little town called St. Clair Shores. It's really not that little, it's got 3 high schools, 4 technically if you count the adult education school.

In school I didn't do much, I was known as that really nice kid that everybody could talk to, but he didn't talk back much. I also was apparently really smart, so everybody always asked me questions. I don't know where they got that idea.

Only thing productive I did in high school was that I was in a Mechanical Engineering class, it was fun we built things, I made like 3 air pressure based t-shirt launchers. They were pretty cool.

However, my highest accolade during that class would be most certainly making an RC car that could drive itself, dodge walls, drive to a certain location, and take videos and pictures. It was pretty neat.

For music choices I usually tend to listen to anything hard rock, rock, metal, country, or j-pop related, with the occasional electronic or dubstep here and there.

I wouldn't say I'm good at many things, but I have a few skills that I like to share;

I can play guitar, I speak very little Japanese こんにちわ！私はブラドリイです。よろしくおねがいします！Which translates to: Hello! I am Bradley, nice to meet you!
I can also play chess pretty well, NERD! I can also cook, yaay?

A little bit about what I do: I usually play video games, watch anime (ew), study, or just hang out with friends. I'm not a real social kind of person, however if you ever have a problem I will listen and let you vent on anything and will try to give you advice, but it's usually really bad.

Anyways, this isn't all what I'm about, mostly just key points, knowing the real me would take a long time, or about an hour of spending time with me.

I'm not a very interesting person.

Personal Narrative

So, for class we are writing two stories, one that is fictional and one that is nonfictional. I am personally able to write fiction pretty well, it's what I would call my strong suit. However whenever anything is nonfiction and has to pertain to my life I cannot do to save my life. In my opinion I always thought my life to be insignificant and boring so I couldn't really write about something being true. I usually lied about what I wrote about in school because I could never come up with anything. So personally I am DREADING this upcoming assignment and I really just want to get it out of the way so I don't have to even think about it anymore.

My current situation

So since I decided to stop being an engineer last year I have been attempting to browse around new majors to set my eye for. For now at Western I have picked business or finances, however due to recent searches my eyes have sent me some place else.
Simulation, Animation, and Gaming. This major would force me to transfer to Eastern Michigan University, sadly. This made me really sad because I love being at Western, Western has quickly turned into my home away from home and to learn that it doesn't offer what I want brought me to tears knowing that I'd be leaving all my friends and this beautiful campus with wonderful people. At the end of the day I have no other choice because Western is also becoming too much money for me to stay and EMU is way cheaper.

The Lesson

So the day of class on 9/15 we started talking about two stories called: The Lesson and Me Talk Pretty One Day. I really enjoyed The Lesson, I thought it was a really fun read. Usually reading autobiographies, memoirs, or even a fictional story about every day life, bores me and I dislike having to read it. However, I thought that The Lesson really captured the essence of that a lot of ghetto or poor neighborhoods have children that are really uneducated children who really give up on ever getting better and becoming and educated individual. It also shows that some people really care and want to change this, people like Ms. Moore. Throughout the story that kids never really wanted to learn anything, they hardly wanted to go on the trip that Ms. Moore was taking them on, and even at the end of the day it really didn't seem like they cared what Ms. Moore had to say. Overall the story was well written and well established, the characters actually seemed to be real and plausible to be real people.

Leidenfrost Effect

In my free time I tend to research a topic that first comes to my mind, lately I have been recently searching up cryogenics and recently came to this whole new scientific phenomenon that is called the Leidenfrost Effect (hence, the title). The Leidenfrost Effect is a truly magnificent thing, if something of an extremely high temperature touches something that is significantly colder than it it will more or less, bounce or bead off. For example: there is a hot plate that gets to be so hot that when water is poured on top of it the water beads up, and rolls right off. The way this works is that a part of the the water evaporates so quickly that a wall of vapor is making a distance between the water and the hot plate. Here is a picture example explaining how it works.

image received from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect
created by wiki user: Vystrix Nexoth

This can also work for multiple other kinds of liquids and solids, such as: pouring liquid nitrogen in short bursts onto a human hand (do not try this at home), also submerging your hand into a vat of liquid nitrogen can produce the same effect. When performed your hand will return completely dry, yet extremely cold, so it is ill advised to practice this because it takes correct timing to perform these tests and can be extremely dangerous.